Pan-STARRS operates a 1.8 meter telescope at the summit of Haleakala on Maui with which the Near Earth Project tracks objects having the potential to collide with earth. After explaining their camera’s enormous seven-degree field of view to the visiting high school class, the docent told them, “Your timing is great. Last night we found something pretty exciting.” He aimed a remote at a flat screen monitor. The students saw three specks of light against the background of stars. He clicked the remote again and with a laser pointer circled a bright star. “Notice that these three objects have moved relative to this star. These images were taken an hour apart.”

“What are they?” a boy asked.

“We don’t know. We estimate they are roughly two-hundred meters across and they are going to pass very close to the earth in about forty days. We’ve never seen an object moving this fast.”

“Cool. Three alien ships heading for us and you found them on Columbus Day.”

“What if they’re only asteroids and they hit us?” a Polynesian girl asked.

The docent said, “Either would be bad.”

NASA runs the Near Earth Project and duly notified the CIA. The director was unfamiliar with the events from the early fifties and had to make inquiries as to protocol. She was advised to call George Bush, Sr. who was thought to be the last person living with direct knowledge of the Roswell matter. When she got the aging former president on the phone, he sounded worried. “Madam Director, somewhere in your archives is all the information that you need. I just hope to God you can find it.”

Archivists, in their mole-like existence, had little trouble finding the files and a team of analysts began absorbing them. Carrie Player was not one of them.

Carrie Player was at home fixing dinner and watching the news. The report from NASA of three objects travelling in apparent formation on a collision course with earth was not being treated as an alien encounter. Speculation about an asteroid having been broken into thirds by a collision with another remained in vogue. The next morning she went to her supervisor.

“I need to be involved in whatever we’re doing about the three alien craft that on their way here,” she said.
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The premise of this science fiction story is: If the Roswell UFO incident happened to be true, what was the big secret?